Hugo Brandt Corstius

(Eindhoven, 1935) is one of the most productive and controversial writers in the Netherlands. In all he published more than forty books since 1966. He gained national fame as a columnist and literary critic. Brandt Corstius wrote his often cutting pieces using more than fifty pen-names. According to himself every one of them is part of his persona. His columns as Piet Grijs for VN and Stoker for the Volkskrant regularly led to controversy. In 1985 the Dutch Cabinet refused to give him the P.C.-Hooft Prize because according to the responsible minister for culture he used offence as his sole instrument: In a column Brandt Corstius had resembled the minister of finance to Adolf Eichmann. Eventually he received the prize in 1987, but owing to the riot, it had been degraded from state prize to ‘ordinary’ prijs. Brandt Corstius studied mathematics in Amsterdam and is a specialist in computer linguistics.